


Snowtrapped

by NightsMistress



Category: Senjou no Valkyria | Valkyria Chronicles
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-18 04:17:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17573726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: While waiting for a blizzard to blow over, Riley and Claude huddle in a cave and are intensely awkward.





	Snowtrapped

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anonamor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonamor/gifts).



> My thanks to my beta, fortune_maiden, for all of their work on this story!

“In here,” Claude said, pulling Riley out of the howling wind into one of the caves that honeycombed the cliffs. The absence of wind was shocking, and Riley hunkered down on the ground to conserve body heat, the frame of her launcher in front of her as a makeshift shield. The blizzard had blown in without warning, as Squad E was retreating from the makeshift battlefield, and Riley and Claude had had to disassemble her grenade launcher with hands that felt like blocks of wood. The run had been terrible, and Riley welcomed the brief respite to catch her breath.

It was when Claude made no move to leave the cave that Riley became suspicious. The Imperials had also retreated under the combined force of Riley’s shelling and the brewing storm, and there would be little risk of enemy attack as they ran for the Centurion. Rather than shouldering his rifle to run, Claude was studying the winter sky. Riley had seen this enough times to know what Claude was doing.

“Claude?” she asked, once she caught her breath. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry,” Claude said, and Riley didn’t need to see his expression to know that his mouth was twisted in that wry, self-deprecating grimace that he always wore when he was about to tell her bad news. She could hear it in his voice, and see it in the line of his shoulders as he turned back to look at her. “Looks like the blizzard is going to last another two and a half hours.”

“What?” Riley demanded as she squinted against the wind and snow. She couldn’t see much, and certainly couldn’t listen to the wind like Claude could, but she was confident she could see the blocky silhouette of the Centurion and the faint glow of its ragnite engine. “It’s just there. Surely we can make a run for it.”

She forced herself up from where she had hunkered down on the ground, wincing as the wind cut through her tights, and picked up the frame of her grenade launcher. It was heavier now than it was when she had put it down, pulling on her strained arms and shoulders, but once she was moving it would probably be easier to lift it. She took one step forward, and then froze in place when Claude rested one hand on her shoulder.

“Riley,” he said firmly. “We’ll die if we try. Even if we managed to get to the Centurion, we’d freeze to death while we waited for them to let us in. It’s better to take shelter here until the blizzard passes.”

The conviction in his voice was surprising, even after all she had seen of him. The Claude that she remembered would have caved with tears in his eyes and a stammering explanation; a Claude who stood up to her without hesitation was something she was still getting used to. That, and he was probably right. She sighed as she mourned the death of her dream of being back on the Centurion, free of her combat gear, and able to thaw out on her bed. Her back and shoulders ached from having to physically lift and realign the launcher to target various strategic areas, her head hurt from squinting into the blizzard, and she could really go for a warm beverage right now.

“It’s a pity you can’t really talk to the weather,” she said, trying to sound light to break the tension between them. It worked, with Claude startled in laughter.

“No kidding,” he agreed readily. “It would be nice to ask the Winter Witch to go bother someone else for a change.”

Now that she was arm’s length from Claude, she could make out more of his expression. He looked tired and cold, but alert as he gazed out into the storm. She could only see his profile, and in a way it was easier to talk to him that way than if he was looking at her directly.

“I never pictured you as such a romantic,” she teased, and was rewarded by Claude’s startled ‘what’ in reply. She continued with, “Calling the winter the Winter Witch. I expected it from Connor, but not from you. You seem too cerebral for it.”

“I guess,” Claude said, clearly embarrassed. He turned to look at her, before clearing his throat to look away. “But don’t you think that it is alive, in a way? Wild and dangerous and mercurial.”

“Oh, so _that’s_ what you like in women,” Riley noted, making a mental note to herself to remember this in the future. “Or maybe you’re making up stories to go with all those drawings you do in your journal, hm?”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Claude said, voice strangled, studying the sky with mortified intensity. “We’re going to need a heat source, and soon.”

Riley abandoned teasing Claude for the time being and started patting herself down for grenades. She made a face as she remembered that she had thrown the last one to cover Lily’s retreat after Lily had tripped on a branch and almost brought the entire cliff face down onto her and Odin both. How those two got through Ranger training without someone dying was a mystery. Her hand fell on the ragnaid canister she carried on her belt, and she remembered a paper she had read in Vinland about the flammability of ragnaid under certain conditions. The implications were tantalising, and also buried under layers of secrecy because no military wanted to know that the field medicine soldiers carried could also be turned into weapons. Still, it would do the army little good if Riley died here, and she thought she could replicate the conditions with the tools she had to hand.

“I have an idea,” she said. “We could burn our ragnaid.”

“I … thought it was inert,” Claude said warily.

“It’s designed to be that way,” Riley said quickly to reassure him. “But if you change the alignment of the firing pin and then tweak the release valve the right way, it’ll ignite. Then we’ll have light and heat.”

“Really?” Claude did not sound reassured.

Riley honestly couldn’t blame him, especially because she wasn’t entirely sure it would work either. “The theory’s sound, anyway.”

“That’s not making me feel any better about carrying little grenades on my hip without knowing,” Claude said dryly. He unhooked his ragnaid canister and handed it to Riley. “I trust you though. Try not to blow us up.”

Riley smiled a quick thank you before using her instrument screwdriver to unscrew the base of the canister and gain access to its internal mechanism. Her hands were too cold and clumsy for delicate work, but fortunately Claude’s ragnaid canister was one of the older models and so could take a bit of rough handling. The base came off with a pop, exposing the valve and firing pin. The pin was shorter than she had expected, making it a little harder than she had anticipated to get her pliers into the right place to realign it to the right angle, but Riley was nothing if not confident in her work. The pin snapped into place, she turned the valve, and was rewarded by the sudden increase of heat and pressure inside the canister. She placed it down on the ground, base against the stone, before stepping backward. The ragnite ignited just as her foot touched the ground and she held her breath. The glass didn’t shatter, and she let her breath go in a sigh of relief.

The ragnaid burned blue, washing the small cavern with intensely blue light. It was a lot like the eerie storm that the Imperial Valkyria had conjured with her staff, which was something for Riley to think about another day. She looked around at their surroundings, and was surprised that it was not as spacious as she had initially thought. The cave was not part of the cave network that they had used to navigate earlier, instead a shallow indentation into the cliff maybe several metres deep and a couple of metres wide at its widest point.

At some point, Claude had turned to face her, and she could see him properly now. He looked awed, even with the weight of fatigue drawing his shoulders down. Riley winced at the ugly cut that tore the skin of his temple open, blood streaking down his face horribly. She knew that head wounds bled a lot, and that he would have told her if it was serious, but the way that the blood reflected the light was particularly unsettling.

“You should have said something,” she said, nodding at his wound. “I’ve still got some ragnaid we can use.”

Claude put his hand up to his head, winced as his fingers brushed the edges, and then looked at his fingertips. The blood smears were dark in the blue light. “I’ve had worse,” he said. “Besides, aren’t we going to need your ragnaid to burn too?”

“I’m not sure,” Riley said. “I didn’t see you use any of your ragnaid. There should be enough then to last about two hours. It all depends on how accurate your wind whispers are.” She pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket and moistened it with the water bottle she kept inside her winter coat. “But do you mind if I take a look?”

She had expected Claude to stammer. Instead, he stayed still as she approached him. She rested one hand on his shoulder for balance as she got up on the balls of her feet to have a better angle, and was disappointed to learn that right now her nose was too frozen to smell the cologne he was wearing. Instead she reached up and started to wipe the blood away. She tried to be gentle, but her hands were still too cold to be anything but rough. Claude didn’t complain, even as she drew closer to the edges of the cut itself. The wound was long and a little ragged, and Riley had seen enough shrapnel injuries to know that it had been a close call.

The thought of Claude dying made her shake, and she didn’t need to have unsteady hands right now. Instead, she tried to memorise the lines of his face as she finished cleaning the rest of the blood from his temple. Even now, worn and dirty, with that half-nervous smile as he watched her, he was still undeniably handsome. It was aggravating; they were in a warzone, and she didn’t have time to ogle a pretty face, even if it was a childhood acquaintance. Even if she was at least half in love with him.

No, it was because she was definitely in love with him, she had made such a terrible first impression, and now she was too embarrassed to make the first move.

“Is there something on my face?” Claude asked when her examination went on too long.

Riley took a step backward, and could feel the radiant heat of the ragnaid canister on her calf. She used that as an excuse to look down so she could avoid knocking it over, and then recover her composure. She could feel that she was blushing furiously, and she didn’t want to let Claude see it.

When she was confident that she could look at him without potentially dying of embarrassment, she looked up and commented as casually as she could, “You need to shave.”

From Claude’s bemused expression, she could have been more casual about it.

“Uh, yeah,” Claude said finally. “Sorry. I’ll take care of it when we get back to the Centurion. I didn’t know it bothered you.”

“No, it’s fine!” Riley said, waving her hands quickly to deny it. “I didn’t mean that it was a bad thing! It’s just … strange.”

“Strange?” Claude echoed.

It was Claude’s clear confusion, along with Riley recognising that she was acting like a lovesick fool, that made her start laughing. It felt good to laugh, especially when Claude started laughing helplessly as well.

“Wow,” Riley gasped, once her laughter subsided enough for her to catch her breath. “We’re really awkward.”

“We really are,” Claude agreed ruefully. “It’s a good thing Kai and Raz didn’t see that.”

“Tell me about it,” Riley said. “Though really, are they any better?”

“Not really,” Claude said, shaking his head. “They’ve been dancing around it since training, though it got _really_ obvious when Kai knocked Raz down in CQC and he just stared at her afterward.”

Riley could definitely see that - Kai walking away and Raz gazing after her like a puppy. Though, now that she thought about it, it was probably more that Raz was staring at her ass as she walked away. Raz was nothing if not vocal about what he appreciated in life.

“I always thought that Raz would end up with someone who could beat some sense into him,” she mused. “Though I didn’t think it would be so literal.”

“It’s Raz,” Claude said, as if it explained everything. It probably did.

“I don’t know that I ever pictured us all being grown up like this,” Riley said, gazing past Claude to the winter storm outside. While the weather raged on, the heat from the burning ragnaid made things seem tolerable, especially as her hands and feet started to thaw. “Maybe I just assumed you and everyone else from Hafen would stay as I remembered you, while I grew up.”

“Maybe,” Claude said. “Growing up’s inevitable, but it was still a surprise to see you. It must be harder for you to see how all of us changed while you were away.”

It was and wasn’t. She could recognise the traits she remembered in them now: Raz was still reckless and impulsive, Kai was impatient and loved bread beyond reason, and Claude spent too much time inside his own head. But she could also see how the passage of time had honed those traits, giving them purpose and confidence in their skills and training. If she had stayed in Hafen, she might have seen their transformation rather than the end result, and she mourned the loss of that opportunity. On the other hand, it sounded like Claude had undergone this change while away from the others, and so she might not have seen it at all.

She shook her head to clear it, and started rummaging through her pockets to find her notebook to transcribe today’s results while she remembered. The date at the top niggled at her, but it wasn’t until she finished totaling up the day’s use of artillery that she placed the significance of it.

“Talking about getting older,” Riley said slyly as she tucked her notepad away. “Isn’t today your birthday?”

“Well, yeah,” Claude said, nonplussed. “Why do you ask?”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Claude shrugged. “It wasn’t important. It wasn’t like we could call off the mission for my birthday.”

“I suppose not,” Riley conceded. “We are in a warzone.” Still, it seemed sad to celebrate your birthday by hiding in a small cave waiting for a blizzard to pass. At least she could occupy her time thinking of ideas to help celebrate it when they returned. “But … okay, what do you want to do when we get back?”

“Defrost.”

It was a heartfelt answer, and one that Riley could sympathise with entirely. It was also not an answer that she could do anything with in terms of a gift.

“Me too,” she said. “But that’s not really what I meant.”

She could see realisation dawn on Claude, and he blushed. “Uh, I don’t know.”

“Well, you have heaps of time to think about it.” She smiled then, bright and teasing. “At least two hours, you said?”

Claude didn’t respond to her teasing, instead sitting down near the ragnite and leaving his rifle on his outstretched legs. Riley joined him, drawing her knees up under her winter coat, and regretting yet again her decision to have tights rather than trousers for her winter uniform. It was much warmer down near the canister, almost comfortable, and Riley leaned forward to check the level of ragnaid left. It looked mostly full still, which was interesting. She’d have to take the canister with her when they left so she could write up her findings.

“Honestly, this is fine,” Claude said, breaking the silence. His voice was quiet and sincere, and the effect it had on Riley was completely unfair.

“This is fine,” Riley said sardonically in an attempt to distract Claude from her blush. “We’re trapped in a blizzard a stone’s throw away from the Centurion, and this is fine?”

“Yeah,” Claude agreed. “I’m glad you’re the one here with me today.”

“All right,” Riley said. “I give in. A shallow cave and a blizzard can be your birthday gift.”

She pretended she didn’t hear Claude’s chuckle, folding her arms and studying the ragnaid canister. If Claude wasn’t going to give her any guidance, so be it; she would come up with the perfect birthday surprise without his help. After all, they would be in close proximity for the next two hours, and he’d probably let something slip during that time she could use.


End file.
